Former Paly English teacher Chris Proctor is competing for a $25,000 grant to support Winedark Web, his educational tool designed for teachers that will be closely based on his Web site.

Voting for the Pepsi Refresh Project Grant runs from March 1 to 31, and individuals can vote for Proctor’s project once per day.

Supporters can also help promote Proctor’s project by becoming a fan of Winedark Web’s Facebook page and inviting friends to do the same, he said.

As Winedark Web is still in early stages of development, Proctor primarily needs to use the grant for hiring intern programmers, interviewing a variety of teachers and students to determine their needs in a teaching software, and encouraging teachers to test an upcoming beta release, he said.

Proctor said his primary goal for this project is to revolutionize the ways that English teachers use technology to supplement their curricula, though he hopes that teachers in other subjects will also be able to find his program useful.

If schools already have a comprehensive learning management system for all teachers to use, such as InClass, Winedark Web would preserve that valuable unity while providing a wide range of tools in one easy-to-use program, according to Proctor.

“For teachers who have a site to use as their online home base, Winedark Web will mostly offer behind-the-scenes tools, such as a gradebook, vocabulary tools, and student accounts that let teachers check student blogs and put students into groups,” he explained.

However, this tool is custom built for teachers who do not know who to code, he said, which should make it easier to use than other systems.

“The reason so many school Web sites are frustrating to use is that they were not designed by people who understand what teachers actually need,” he said.

Alternatively, for schools that lack a unified web presence, Winedark Web would drastically improve communication across and within departments, Proctor said.

“Winedark Web will also provide easy-to-maintain homework and testing calendars and announcements pages that provides valuable communication in a school,” he added. “It fosters teacher collaboration, something that some teachers within departments do now in spite of the tools they have available, not because of them.”

Proctor sets his program apart from others by stressing that it is developed by teachers for teachers.

“The majority of educational software today is inadequate and based on outdated pedagogy,” he said. “For example, most education software tends to treat learning as a private and secret activity, and doesn’t make it easy for teachers to structure the kinds of robust group-oriented learning that I believe in.”

Proctor’s dual degrees in education and computer science uniquely position him to seriously improve the way that teachers use educational programs.

“Most people who can code don’t understand teaching, and most teachers can’t code,” he said. “After several years of writing code for myself, it’s time to develop my tools into a more robust form I can share with colleagues across the country.”

Proctor has been supplementing his teaching with his Web site, mrproctor.net, to publish class information and to support student interaction.

“I use mrproctor.net to publish announcements, a homework calendar, and a calendar for parents to let them know what’s going on in class,” he said. “I post all the class slides, lesson plans, assignments, and vocabulary words that we use in class. When we use other web resources, I use mrproctor.net as a central hub, providing instructions and links.”

“I also use mrproctor.net to support student interactions,” Proctor continued. “I check my students’ outside reading blogs, and the comments they post on each others’ blogs, using tools connected to my site. We also used a Wiki-like structure to read a novel analytically, collecting examples of literary elements and collaboratively assembling claims about their meaning.”

This type of consistent collaboration and critical thinking in and out of the classroom significantly bolsters student learning, according to Proctor.

“By the time class starts, we’ve already had a chance to do some serious thinking and sharing,” Proctor said. “It’s no surprise that students take their writing much more seriously when they know their classmates are reading it and taking it seriously too.”

Some of Proctor’s former students found his Web site very useful.

“I liked being able to see my grade and to find vocab lists, assignments, and sample essays online,” said junior Shireen Jaffer, who was Proctor’s student as a freshman. “InClass was unreliable and I’m glad he used something that depended on an external server.”

Moreover, students actually enjoy his unconventional infusion of technology into classroom education.

“One of our assignments was to create our own blog,” Jaffer said. “I was sick of doing book reports and boring posters, but with a blog, I could express myself however I wanted in a new medium. It was also really interesting to see other people’s blogs.”

If Winedark Web provides the system for teachers everywhere to duplicate mrproctor.net for their own teaching, it will be very successful, Jaffer said.

The program’s name was inspired from the literary usage of “winedark” as a positive symbol for discovery, according to Proctor.

“I chose the term Winedark Web because of the positive
connotations it has for so many students of literature,” Proctor explained. “The ‘winedark sea’ is one of the most common epithets in The Odyssey, a term which describes the excitement, mystery, possibilities, and danger which have always driven people to the ocean.”

“I think the Web has many of these qualities as well, and they are qualities that we desperately need more of in our English classrooms,” he said.